Yes, it's pretty frustrating how slowly the community driven ideas move. The subscribe to smart lists idea is nearly 4 years old and has over 600 "likes": https://community.marketo.com/MarketoIdeaDetail?id=08750000000HAX9AAO
Right now, we have divided all the countries into three segements and send to those three segments based on what time may work best for all countries. We have seen some good results by doing this, but I would be eager to see how much of an uptick we would see in open and click rates if Marketo could automatically do this for us based on the lead's location.
Here is a workaround. So I boiled down this feature to 2 problems it must solve. Since it is not released, we have to solve these problems manually by configuring Marketo in an unintuitive way.
Problem 1: Leads not separated by time zone by default. Problem 2: Campaign can only be scheduled for one time for one set of leads
Solution 1: Create time zone specific segments with logic based on location
NOTE: This part is particularly tedious because you have to create a list of values for states or countries that you want to be in a certain timezone
There are articles will help assist in creating these segments: How to create segmentation (that holds timezone segments): https://community.marketo.com/MarketoTutorial?id=kA250000000KyzyCAC
How to create segment rules (to qualify a lead for a timezone): https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000LBEqCAO
Approve your segmentation: https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000LBEvCAO
Solution 2: Create multiple campaigns for same purpose, they have same flow logic, using different segment filter for time zone segments you created, then schedule campaigns for different times depending on those segments. You have to do conversions relative to your instance's timezone. For example, if you live in PST and you wanted an email campaign to go out at 7am, you would have to schedule a campaign that is meant for EST segment 3 hours ahead at 10am in the campaign's schedule tab.
How to use segment filter in smart list (tab for your campaigns, 1 campaign per timezone): https://community.marketo.com/MarketoTutorial?id=kA250000000KzWjCAK
Any update on the progress of this new functionality - is it on the Roadmap? We are an international business and this is doable, but quite a tedious process. Great idea Adem.
Marketo doesn't seem to want to respond to hot topics/requests and ideas that are important to it's user base, such as this one. There is another hot one with over 500 votes and has been out there for 4 years. We keep asking Marketo to respond, but they don't. I reached out to Cheryl Chavez, VP Product Management & UX at Marketo, but she just doesn't reply back. Essentially, the request is to have time stamp properties identifying who created programs and assets in Marketo and when they were created, in addition to last modified, last modified by, deleted, etc. How can you manage change control in a system with multiple users, and functionality that is public-facing, and not have time stamp properties? If you haven't seen this post, please go to this URL and vote for it: https://nation.marketo.com/ideas/1034
Totally agree! I submitted this idea also and said that Mailchimp, a FREE emailing service has this option, so no reason for Marketo not to get with the times.
I contacted Cheryl about this at the Marketo day they had in London last year and again last week and here is what I got:
Hi Emily,
This is currently not on our roadmap and I can't give you a timeframe for when this will make it on the roadmap.
Thanks,
Cheryl
This is not good enough - they need to keep their clients happy.
Wow, Emily. That is so discouraging. I've seen Cheryl's standard reply through out the Community. Too bad she can't be a little more creative and at least try to convey an interest in what her customers need and are voting for.
This is currently not on our roadmap and I can't give you a timeframe for when this will make it on the roadmap.
I agree that this would be a very useful feature to have and save so much time rather than creating regions and different send times based on regions manually.